Tag Archives: John Ratzenberger

A couple of weeks back, during discussion of the Top Ten Pixar Movies several people surprised me by ranking the second chapter of the Toy Story saga as the best. Prior to that I had always thought that people were merely divided between 1 and 3. So, seeing as we have an opportunity to hash these things out here, let’s! Shall we?

In 2008 Pixar Animation Studios released “WALL•E”, an animated movie that defied genre expectations. The film opens with a long chapter where the lead character is by himself, and throughout the movie, he and his romantic partner have limited verbal communication. It was a bold play, but done so well that audiences and critics responded overwhelmingly. “WALL•E” was an enormous success financially, scored 96% on Rotten Tomatoes, and won the Oscar for best animated film. It is now one of the highest rated animated films in IMDb’s top 250.

But the main thing was that it was so unique, it was a such an original effort… more than Pixar’s prior exceptional offerings, even.

So when “Up” was released the next year, the question on everybody’s mnd was, “Could Pixar do it again?”